Heitz started to
collect material for this masterpiece of
ophthalmic history about 25 years ago.

A busy ophthalmologist, it was only when he retired
from his medical duties, that he started his new career as an historian.

Having
been the instigator and editor (with W. Ehrich in Germany) of
the first medical journal devoted entirely to contact lenses (Contactologia),
and the founder of the European Contact Lens Society,it is not surprising that
his interest was to focus
on this speciality of
ophthalmology.

His
entry in the International
Biography and Bibliography of Ophthalmologists(IBBO): reads as follows .

Heitz, Robert Fernand
(1932- ) French ophthalmologist and historian.Heitz was
born in Haguenau, Alsace, France. He went to
Strasbourg and received his MD in 1960. His internship was spent at the Hôpitaux de la RégionSanitaire de Strasbourg from 1956 to 1960 and he became an
ophthalmologist under Jean Nordmann in 1963. Heitz was assistant at the Institut de Parasitologie of the StrasbourgUniversity
from 1961 to 1962, Director of Clinical Education at the StrasbourgLouisPasteurUniversity
from 1983 to 1997. He was Head of the Ophthalmic Clinic at the Centre Hospitalier de Haguenau and
expert consultant to the Head of the Hospitals at the Minister of
Public Health in Paris and to the French Agency of Health Products (as President of the
Commission for Homologation and Material Control in Ophthalmology). He is a
member of the SociétéFrançaised’Ophtalmologie; Deutsche OphthalmologischeGesellschaft, Sociétéd’Ophtalmologie de l’Est de la France,
SociétéFrançaise des Ophtalmologistesadaptateurs de Prothèses de Contact, European Contact Lens Society
(ECLSO),( Founder, then treasurer).

He
is also a member of theSociétéd’histoire
de la médecine, Société francophone d’histoire de l’ophtalmologie and the Julius Hirschberg Gesellschaftfuer Geschichte derAugenheilkunde.

Heitz received the Fick-Kalt-MüllerMedal from the ECLSO in 1983 and the Louis
Emile Javal Silver Service Distinction from the
International Contact Lens Council of Ophthalmology in 1986. He is the
founder and then from 1979 to 1991 was Editor in Chief of both
the French and the German edition of the international medical journal Contactologia(Enke
Stuttgart) and co-author, with G. Elie of Guide
de ContactologieMédicale1988. He has authored more than 150 publications mainly in French, but also
in German and English, on ophthalmic clinical aspects in
relation to contact lenses, the history of contact lenses and
public health.

HeitzattainedhisPhD (Paris, École Pratique
des Hautes Études) afterpresenting
a thesis on theHistory of CornealNeutralizationand of Contact Lenses(Étude historique des principes et des
applications des systèmes de contact oculaire dans le contexte des
connaissances du XVIe siècle à la première moitié du XXe siècle). This thesis will
be published in an English version (translated by Colin Mailer) by WayenborghOstend/Belgium, as
part of the Hirschberg Series. For his activities to the Public Health, Robert Heitz received the French Ordre
National duMérite. JPW.